Craig Smith - Cold Rain

I was on sabbatical and dropped by my department for no better reason than to rub it in. Making the rounds office by office I listened to the latest, inquired about projects and remembered to mention families. Asked what I was doing with my free time, I would confess to reading those books I never had time for when I was grading papers. There was envy among my colleagues naturally, but everyone I spoke to either had a sabbatical coming up or had just finished one, so we were all conspirators.

I ended the morning at Walt Beery’s office. Walt had been a medievalist of some reputation once upon a time. For the past decade or so he filled in as the department’s last bad boy. When I had arrived on campus eight years before, Walt had befriended me while others on the faculty were still considering it. I valued that about Walt.

‘I was thinking about getting out of here for some lunch,’ Walt announced after the surprise of seeing me in his doorway. ‘What do you think?’

Over the years Walt and I had stolen an afternoon or two in various taverns, and though I was not drinking at that time I suspect the very sight of me made Walt thirsty. That’s a bit egotistical, I suppose. Around noon, almost anything could make Walt thirsty. I had gotten all the news that was fit to broadcast. It was time for the good stuff, which Walt always had in abundance.

Still the junior prof in the presence of an Olympian, I shrugged agreeably. Lunch sounded good.

We went to Caleb’s. A new menu, Walt assured me as we walked across the cindered lot to the back door.

What he meant by that was they were now carrying Beck’s. I had been to Caleb’s too many times over the years to really see it anymore. It was hardly more than a big dark room with lots of tables and beer signs, eight ball at one end, a short order grill at the other.

At night it catered to locals. By day Caleb’s was strictly hard-core: serious drinkers only. There was the inevitable stink of spilt beer and as usual our choice of tables, mute testimony to the quality of the new lunch menu.

I ate greasy fries and a leathery hamburger washed down with oily coffee. Walt drank longnecks, which came two-by-two, so as not to wear out the bartender.

We talked about campus politics, the sexual intrigues of various campus perennials, recent scandals (a bit of plagiarism in Education, the miracle being that anyone noticed) and the latest charges brought against various profs, including a complaint against Walt himself. A wave of the hand at this. Purely a misunder -standing.

Having buried these issues and four Beck’s in rapid succession, Walt eventually turned to that subject dearest to his heart, his desperate need for a divorce.

‘Anytime you need a place,’ I told him without letting him see the worn tread on my smile, ‘you‘re welcome to move in with Molly and me.’ This seemed to satisfy Walt, and I could see him working out the details, which mostly involved hiding from Barbara while he entertained swarms of nubile co-eds. ‘But you know,’

I added, as I always did when we had come to this juncture and Walt was looking a little too pleased with the fantasy, ‘neither one of us is going to stand up to Barbara when she comes out to the farm and shoots you like the rabid dog you are.’

His eyes going out of focus, Walt shook his bald head sorrowfully and patted his considerable paunch.

That was the problem, he said. Barbara wasn’t going to handle it well. An open marriage would be the solution, he said at last, but that was out too. ‘She’s scared to death of disease. Thinks I’ll bring something home.’

‘You probably would,’ I told him.

After his fashion Walt began a Chaucerian exposition in the original on the joys of infidelity, or at least serial marriage, the Wife’s ruminations, I think, and from there he expounded Beery-style upon the siren call of youth and the golden time not too many years past when penicillin could cure everything but the bark of an angry husband’s handgun.

‘Why did AIDS have to come along anyway?’ he moaned.

‘I’m against it,’ I told him. ‘Always have been.’

‘It comes from monkeys,’ Walt said. ‘Did you know that, David? Monkeys!’ His laughter had a nervous bit of chatter to it.

‘I was reading in the Times it actually comes from a subspecies of chimpanzees,’ I answered.

‘A chimp?’

I nodded.

Walt shook his head. ‘I’m as liberal as the next guy, but I mean what kind of a man could do it with a monkey?’

‘Chimp,’ I corrected, ‘and I’m not at all sure it wasn’t the other way around.’

Walt’s laughter exploded, and I couldn’t help myself.

I went into an impromptu routine about the good chimp gone bad, tossing quarters on the shower floor.

Walt howled. Another reason Caleb’s stayed mostly empty by day.

As a drunk I had discovered the world was forever young in the presence of Walt Beery in his cups. He had a hair-trigger laugh and an old man innocence that let him enjoy it unabashedly. Sober, I had to admit Walt had become the kind of friend best enjoyed without witnesses.

While he was still imagining the cunning of chimpanzees, I checked my watch. Hated to say it, I told him, but I needed to get back to the farm. I thought this might get a question or two about Molly and Lucy, but instead Walt pointed toward a young couple just then entering Caleb’s. ‘You’ve got to meet this guy,’ he said. ‘One of our new TAs.’

‘Name is Buddy Elder,’ Walt whispered as the couple stopped to let their eyes adjust to the bar’s light. ‘The girlfriend’s a stripper at The Slipper. Can you believe it? The guy is bedding a stripper on a teaching assistant‘s salary!’ The woman had dark hair.

She was trim, certainly, but to be honest almost plain.

‘I went out to see her dance last week,’ Walt confessed.

‘Gave me a free lap dance you wouldn’t believe. HEY!’

The teaching assistant and his girlfriend looked our way. ‘We don’t want any!’ Walt shouted, and that brought them across the shadows of the big room, grinning like old times.

Buddy Elder had the look of a flush graduate student: a bomber jacket, faded jeans, worn flannel shirt, slightly scuffed Wolverine boots. Neo-Bohemian, or as Molly would say, working-class without the work.

He was in his late twenties, a bit old for the game, but still plenty game. About six feet and one-eighty-plus, Buddy was roughly my size, though a good ten pounds heavier. That spring I was down to my fighting weight, six-one, one-seventy. Buddy’s hair was his great pride. I knew this because he didn’t bother to comb it. It was a dirty blond, thick and naturally curly.

According to the style, he kept it shaggy at the top, carefully trimmed along the neck. Having the beginnings of Walt’s disease, tonsured, as Walt put it, I kept my hair short over my entire skull. At Buddy’s age I had worn it longer, and I too had once nurtured the perpetual two-day beard.

Buddy had a nice smile, the kind that creates friendship in a moment. He appeared to be a man who enjoyed life, and I guessed that his sleepy brown eyes never quite came into focus unless a beautiful woman happened by. I might have liked Buddy Elder, maybe even have seen a bit of myself in him if he had bothered to recognize my existence. Instead, when Walt made a half-ass introduction Buddy let his eyes slip my way without bothering to pass along a smile. He gave a cursory nod, and that was it. I took an instant dislike to the guy.

Buddy pointed at the Beck’s lined up like bowling pins in front of Walt. ‘We’ve got class tonight, big guy.’

‘Have you read your assignment?’ Walt snapped.